Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
UK election
SURPRISE: UK prime minister Rishi Sunak announced in a “surprise move” that a general election will be held on 4 July, Business Green reported. It quoted him saying that “this election will take place at a time when the world is more dangerous than it has been since the end of the Cold War”, highlighting “national and energy security” as key issues.
HEAVY DOWNPOUR: On the same day that Sunak made the announcement amid a downpour outside Number 10, a World Weather Attribution study covered by the Press Association found rainfall during storms across the UK and Ireland between October 2023 and March 2024 was made 20% more intense by global warming. The UK’s winters will continue to get wetter in future, according to the study, until the “world reduces emissions to net-zero”.
Oceans court ruling
MARINE PROTECTION: The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the world’s highest court dealing with the oceans, issued a “groundbreaking opinion” on Tuesday ruling that greenhouse gases are a pollutant that could cause “irreversible harm to the marine environment”, the New York Times said. It added that, while “not binding”, the opinion stated that, legally, nations must “take all necessary measures” to cut back emissions to prevent marine pollution.
‘HISTORIC’ VICTORY: Climate Change News reported that the coalition of small island nations responsible for the case called the ruling a “historic” victory. It quoted Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, saying the decision “will inform our future legal and diplomatic work in putting an end to the inaction that has brought us to the brink of an irreversible disaster”.
CLIMATE ‘VICTIMS’: Elsewhere, the Financial Times reported that a first-of-its-kind criminal case has been filed against the fossil-fuel company TotalEnergies and its shareholders by people who have lost family members or suffered harm in weather events made more extreme by climate change. The victims, along with non-profit groups, are accusing the company of criminal wrongdoing, including involuntary manslaughter, the FT said, adding that the company had not responded to its request for comment.
Around the world
- ANTARCTIC RECORD: The Press Association covered a study by the British Antarctic Survey finding record low sea ice levels around Antarctica last year “may have been influenced by climate change”.
- INDIA HEATWAVE: The Indian capital New Delhi felt like a “furnace” and recorded temperatures “soaring” above 46C on Monday, with high temperatures continuing throughout a crucial week in the country’s elections, the Hindustan Times reported.
- AUSTRALIAN COAL DEPENDENCE: Utility company Origin Energy will “delay the closure of Australia’s largest coal-fired power station”, Bloomberg reported, due to government concerns that there is not enough renewable energy to replace it.
- GERMAN BACKSLIDING: Germany approved a “controversial” reform of its climate protection law, eliminating sectoral targets and reducing pressure on sectors such as transportation and buildings to meet them, according to Die Zeit.
- EASTER ISLAND HERITAGE: The Guardian reported that the faces of Easter Island moai statues are being eroded due to “torrential rain”, quoting one conservator saying “we have much more extreme weather than before”.
- US OVERCAPACITY CALLS: US treasury secretary Janet Yellen urged the EU and G7 countries to “communicate to China as a group” regarding concerns about clean-energy industry overcapacity, Reuters said.
52%
The percentage of children in Pakistan who will not be in school next week, as heatwaves force closures in the country’s most populous province, according to the Associated Press.
Latest climate research
- A new study in Nature Communications underscored the importance of considering reliability and carbon pricing for the potential role of off-grid solar power in achieving universal household electricity access in Africa.
- Video gamers are “a worthwhile potential audience” for climate communications, according to a new Climatic Change study, in contrast to “the stereotype of video gamers as disengaged or antisocial” on the topic.
- New research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that while “most of the Amazon does not show critical slowing down” of recovery from small disturbances, a “predicted increase in droughts could disrupt this balance”.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
A new Carbon Brief Q&A explored the continuing debate around the role of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in a world dealing with climate change. Some argue that new gene-editing technologies could help crops deal with extreme weather and boost nutrition, while others cite concerns around production, regulation and patenting of gene-edited crops. Much of current GMO production is concentrated in a small number of countries. The figure above shows that 91% of the land growing genetically modified crops is in the US, Brazil, Argentina, Canada and India. By contrast, genetically modified crops are not currently widely grown in the EU.
Spotlight
The future of China and Russia’s energy cooperation
This week, Carbon Brief examines energy’s role in Sino-Russian relations and how this could change as China moves towards its goal of carbon neutrality by 2060.
Vladimir Putin chose to visit China on 16-17 May, shortly after beginning another term as Russian president.
Previously “sizeable” Sino-Russian energy cooperation has only grown since Russia’s war with Ukraine.
Russia leapfrogged Saudi Arabia in 2023 to become China’s largest supplier of oil. China is now Russia’s top purchaser of coal and crude oil, as well as a top three purchaser of oil products, liquefied “natural” gas (LNG) and pipeline gas.
‘Concrete plans to enhance cooperation’
The two sides published a joint statement during Putin’s visit, pledging to “consolidate Sino-Russian strategic energy cooperation…to safeguard [our] economic and energy security”.
It named oil, gas, LNG, coal and electricity as primary areas for cooperation, with renewables, hydrogen and the carbon market as “prospective” areas.
Progress on the Power to Siberia 2 gas pipeline negotiations, which could supply China with 50bn cubic metres of gas, was not mentioned.
Economic and geopolitical drivers
“Economic complementarities” have led to “robust” Russian imports of oil and gas to China.
Chinese reliance on substantial oil imports will likely “persist”, although future gas import requirements are more uncertain.
Dr Erica Downs, senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, told Carbon Brief she does not think it has been “definitively decided in China” what role gas will play in its energy transition, but that this role may be smaller than previously assumed.
She added that Russian oil is attractive to Chinese policymakers, as overland oil pipelines reduce China’s reliance on “vulnerable” sealane routes and Russia’s war with Ukraine allows Chinese buyers to get discounted rates on Russian barrels.
China’s increased oil and gas imports, following western sanctions on Russian oil, provided an “economic lifeline” to Russia in exchange for “securing cheap supplies”, according to the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI).
Imports from a politically aligned partner are “vital” for China’s energy – and, therefore, economic – security, according to Chatham House.
Not changing with the times
However, this partnership could wane. The UI study argued that China could adopt a “more cautious approach”, depending on geopolitical and economic developments.
Downs told Carbon Brief that, in the near-term, China will remain reliant on oil and gas imports, but that China “has to decide how much…they want to be dependent” on Russia.
If Chinese demand for fossil fuels falls, she said, “Russia becomes a lot less important to China as an economic partner”, although the political partnership remains useful to both.
Despite “buried” statements on clean energy in Sino-Russian agreements, Downs noted, the two countries are not increasing tangible cooperation on non-fossil fuel energy – in stark contrast to increasing Chinese clean energy cooperation with Saudi Arabia, for example. She added:
“[Sino-Russian energy cooperation] is really a hydrocarbon story…I’m not really seeing the level of activity that I’m seeing [from] Chinese companies in other parts of the world in the renewable space.”
Watch, read, listen
‘BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY’: A Reuters investigation found that Japan, France, Germany, the US and other wealthy nations have reaped “billions of dollars” from a programme designed to help developing countries reduce emissions and adapt to extreme weather.
CLIMATE FUNDING: Climate Change News reported that “unsafe housing for cyclone survivors in Malawi, funded by a suspected fraudster”, adds weight to the need to operationalise the UN loss and damage fund.
HUMAN FOLLY: HARDTalk interviewed UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chair Prof Jim Skea on whether the world has missed its chance to limit warming to 1.5C.
Coming up
- 27-30 May: Fourth International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS4), Antigua and Barbuda
- 27 May-1 June: 77th World Health Assembly, Geneva, Switzerland
- 27 May-29 May: Third G20 Energy Transitions Working Group Meeting, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
- 29 May: South Africa elections
- 30 May: International Energy Agency (IEA) Strategies for Affordable and Fair Clean Energy Transitions report launch
Pick of the jobs
- The Climate Museum, special assistant to the director | Salary: $65,000. Location: New York
- Shetland Islands Council, energy transition communication officer | Salary: £40,062-£41,703. Location: Shetland
- Climate Action Network UK, co-chairs and board directors | Salary: Expenses. Location: Remote
- Department for Business and Trade, head of responsible business and ESG policy | Salary: £53,560-£63,481. Location: Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Darlington, Edinburgh, London or Salford
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 24 May 2024: ‘Surprise’ UK election; Oceans court ruling; China and Russia’s fossil-fuel pact appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Energy crisis
ENERGY SPIKE: US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent counterattacks across the Middle East have sent energy prices “soaring”, according to Reuters. The newswire reported that the region “accounts for just under a third of global oil production and almost a fifth of gas”. The Guardian noted that shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz, which normally ferries 20% of the world’s oil, “all but ground to a halt”. The Financial Times reported that attacks by Iran on Middle East energy facilities – notably in Qatar – triggered the “biggest rise in gas prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.
‘RISK’ AND ‘BENEFITS’: Bloomberg reported on increases in diesel prices in Europe and the US, speculating that rising fuel costs could be “a risk for president Donald Trump”. US gas producers are “poised to benefit from the big disruption in global supply”, according to CNBC. Indian government sources told the Economic Times that Russia is prepared to “fulfil India’s energy demands”.